Rumsfeld Tells Congress Changes Needed to Increase Flexibility

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5, 2003 -- Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld asked Congress to enact sweeping changes in the
way the department is managed as he presented the defense
portion of the president's fiscal 2004 budget request.

Rumsfeld told members of the House Armed Services Committee
that to win the global war on terror, the U.S. military
must be flexible, light and agile, "so that they can
respond quickly to sudden changes in the world.

"The same is true of the men and women of the department,"
Rumsfeld continued. "They also need to be flexible and
agile, so that we can move money, and shift people, and
design and buy new weapons more quickly, and respond to the
frequent sudden changes in our security environment."

The department does not have that kind of agility, he said,
and that puts the United States at a decided disadvantage
when confronting terrorists.

"In an age when terrorists move information at the speed of
an e-mail, money at the speed of a wire transfer, and
people at the speed of a commercial jetliner, the Defense
Department, I regret to say, is bogged down in bureaucratic
processes of the industrial age -- not the information
age," Rumsfeld said. "Some of our difficulties are self-
imposed, to be sure. But some are the result of law and
regulation. Together, they have created a culture that too
often stifles innovation."

The secretary used the fiscal 2004 budget as an example. He
said the department started formulating the budget in March
2002 and completed its work in December. The Office of
Management and Budget worked on it through this month.
Congress will consider the budget and pass it in October or
November 2004.

"That means that at any given time during the coming fiscal
year that this budget will address, that plan that we
developed last year will be ... 14 months to 30 months old
while we are trying to implement the product that comes out
of the Congress," he said. "And we'll be doing this in a
world that is changing monthly before our eyes. At a
minimum, we will always be between one and two-and-a-half
years out of date."

Rumsfeld had other examples. DoD spends $42 million an
hour, yet the department cannot move more than $15 million
from one account to another without permission from
Congress. He said that means any change must go through
four to six committees and take months to accomplish.

"Today, we estimate we have some 320,000 uniformed people
doing nonmilitary jobs, yet we are calling up reserves to
fight the global war on terror," he said.

Rumsfeld said DoD prepares and submits 26,000 pages of
justification and over 800 required reports to Congress
each year. He said many of the reports are of marginal
value, but they nevertheless take time to prepare.

"The point is this: We are fighting the first wars of the
21st century with a Defense Department that was fashioned
to meet the challenges of the mid-20th century," he said.
"It has to change."

The secretary called on the representatives to duplicate
their work that created the Department of Homeland
Security.

"I feel we should now address the Department of Defense,"
he said. "We are already working with a number of you and
your staffs to fashion legislation that we could present to
you later this year to try to bring the Defense Department
into the 21st century and to transform how it moves money,
manages people and buys weapons."

Rumsfeld said the department is looking to establish a
National Security Personnel System to give more flexibility
in how DoD manages its 700,000-plus civilian personnel.
"Today, because that task is difficult, we find frequently
we use ... people in uniform for nonmilitary jobs because we
can manage them much more readily," he said. "We use
contractors rather than civilian employees, again because
you can manage a contractor more efficiently."

The secretary also wants to establish more flexible
military retirement rules. He said the military trains and
invests in officers and NCOs and then forces them out the
door in their 40s or early 50s -- just as they are most
productive. Those who want to serve longer should have the
option of doing so, he said.

The secretary said the department can institute some of
these changes, but others will need legislation. He said
the department would continue to work closely with Congress
to move some of these initiatives along.